Sherwin Williams Logo… Really?

Saw this at the paint store the other day. Seems like a pretty bold fuck you to the earth.

Matt Damon on Sarah Palin

I don’t really like Matt Damon that much, but he makes some pretty good/funny points.

My Google Plot to Save the World

A rough outline per google’s peramiters for the 10 million dollar prize:

1. One sentence that best explains the idea.

To rebuild America’s infrastructure through private enterprise.

2. 300 words of the idea in greater depth.

First, I want to invent a new form of private enterprise. Second, I want to use this new form of business to rebuild America’s broken infrastructure.

I want a corporation driven by values instead of by dollars. How? Eliminate the shareholders. Businesses financed by 0% equity, 100% debt. Zero equity means zero profit obligations.

If profit is not the goal, what is? To provide the best service or product possible. Everybody wins. We get jobs that matter and that we can actually be proud of. Consumers get higher quality at lower prices. Break-even strategy means lower price points than competition and a higher probability of success in the market. Higher wages for employees, zero wages for non-existent owners. Essentially, I want to eliminate unearned income in America, and inflate earned income.

This is not instead of our current corporate form, but in addition to, in select broken industries vital to America’s infrastructure.  Green Efficient Energy, Green Efficient Transportation, Insurance, Health Care, Agriculture, Banking, Education, etc. It should bolster our capital markets, as industry will have access to our new efficient and innovative infrastructure. For example, less expensive insurance, transportation, and loan costs.

Where do we start? America’s most pressing need right now – loans. We can take Google’s 10 million dollars and loan it to already established private businesses that are willing to voluntarily realign their values with this plan. A 2% loan on 10 million is 200,000 annually, which will be plenty to cover fees of a loan officer, and will be a very enticing incentive for businesses.

3. 150 words on the issues/problems the idea addresses.

Corporate America and the federal government have a monopoly on America’s infrastructure. They are not up to the task. Bureaucracy, greed, scandal, power etc. all plague this landscape.

Who trusts our current economic and political model to adequately take on the challenge we face today? I certainly do not.

If we want to build a strong, green economy, a new healthcare system, a reformed education system, a regulated financial sector, we cannot count on the same broken and outdated tools that we have relied on to get us into our current mess.

This idea presents a revamped economic model to deal with today’s changing and increasingly complex environment that basic capitalism has proven incapable handling.

 

4. 150 words on who would benefit and how.

Everybody benefits.

Worldwide Consumers benefit,. Lower costs, higher quality on essentials like healthcare, food, housing, energy, and transportation.

Employee’s find themselves with higher wages, and will be sparked with a new sense of what citizenship is all about, working everyday to build a new America.

Corporations as we know them benefit from improved infrastructure.

Government is released of many bureaucratic burdens, and will have an opportunity to reinvent itself.

A strong, healthy, and idealistic America is a powerful basis for all forms of charity, and the world will prosper from it.

5. 150 words on the initial steps to get the idea off the ground.

We can use the publicity of winning “Project 10 to the 100^th” to market our plan to suitable existing private companies, as well as solicit contributions to our loaning institution to broaden the scope of this project.

6. 150 words on the optimal outcome if idea is selected and implemented.

Already stated. Alright jerks, start poking holes in my plan to save the world. Parker?

Project 10 to the 100th

Google at it again with a badass idea.

http://www.project10tothe100.com

The premise? You submit your idea to help the world – if you win you get 10 million dollars.

So anyways, I am in the process of getting my idea in there. I will be posting here first for comments and help.

Entries must be put in the following format:

1. One sentance that best explains the idea.

2. 300 words of the idea in greater depth.

3. 150 words on the issues/problems the idea addresses.

4. 150 words on who would benefit and how.

5. 150 words on the initial steps to get the idea off the ground.

6. 150 words on the optimal outcome if idea is selected and implimented.

Optional (IMO necessary) 30 second YouTube video explaining the idea.

So anyways, my idea obviously involves bullet trains. I am going to post an outline later tonight of an idea I have been working on the past year or so, and I am looking for help because this is clearly my one shot. Also I am interested to see if you guys also have any ideas that can be submitted.

Do we know anybody that is good at making YouTube movies? Who does those YouTube clips of Brandon Roy doing BBall moves? He probably loves bullet trains, right?

My problem with the presidency

Since I’ve been eligible to vote I’ve had 3 choices: Bush, Gore, or Kerry. I haven’t liked any of them so I haven’t voted yet on a president. I was going to vote for Bush the first time but I never got around to it. Neither Gore or Kerry have impressed me at all, although since he gave up politics I will say Gore has grown on me quite a bit. My main problem is that I happen to be fiscally conservative, but not the far right wing fundamental neo-con that the Republican party is currently pushing on the voters. Not that it’s not just their fault. For them its all about getting their candidate in office, and Jesus Christ there are a lot of ultra conservatives in this country. So they lean farther right to take more votes that away from the Democrats and that frees up some wiggle room for the Dems to take a position on some social issues that they can capitalize on, so they do to same and shift towards a more socialist system.

The problem is that in a 2 party system, the way to win is to find an issue that 51% or more of the population agrees with and make that your cause. But the political spectrum is not a straight line from right to left. Instead there is an X and Y axis where the X access represents your take on economics and the Y social issues. So the two parties move about randomly, just outside the centrist view on opposite sides from each other. I think there are a lot of different ways to graph the political spectrum, but here is one.

So basically, if your views happen to fall on the perpendicular corner from the two oposing parties, like say toward Gandhi here, you are screwed. I mean why can’t I be a Republican but agree with the right to abortion? Well, because 55% (or whatever) of the population thinks that a fetus has a Christian soul, that’s why. I guess I’m not sure what I am mad about because it makes sense that a politician needs to get the most votes to win so they go after them. But what doesn’t make any sense to me is the random line drawn down the middle that the 2 parties fight for. You get especially mad if you watch how much a candidate like McCain has changed over the past several years (like on stem cell research) and moves towards standard party lines as the election nears, or how Obama is sure to head toward the middle ground on other issues where ever votes can be picked up. For example Obama is set to raise taxes to give billions to a congress with a 14 percent approval rating. They will then dole it out to whatever programs they think worthy, how is this a good idea? Not that its his fault, he can pick up a lot of votes if he promises socialized health care… he hardly has a choice but to be for it.

Anyway I won’t get in to my problem with the current state of the Democrats, mostly because I dont know that much about it besides my ideological differences. But the current Republican party is probaby worse off as it is anyway. Im not sure where to start but it’s mostly that the party leaders don’t practice what they preach. Not that this is news to anyone but just look at the “small government” Republican budgets as of late: Federal spending has gone up from $1.6 trillion in 1996 (Clinton) to $3.1T (Bush). So what the hell is going on there?

Simple answer: obviously overspending the budget on the war. Now I would probably end up argueing that Gross Domestic Product rises in recent years compared to the advances in the budget defecits make it not a financial problem with how much we spend, but that is besides the point.  Im not so worried about the size of the deficit as I am how of both parties balloon the government into the retarded overgrown monster it is. Obvoiusly this represents a huge spending increase in the last several years and will continue to do so for the next… what 10-15 years? Unless of course the Iraqis really do kick us out by 2011 but even if that happens and a Republican is in office, I am sure we will shift the already trained and deployed forces to Afghanistan for operation “rest of the the brown ones”. (for those of you keeping track at home that’s David Cross 2, Parker 0) . Not that I am really against our operations in Afghanistan… that placed is fucked up. I guess im just not sure that our record as World Police is quite as stellar as we would like it to be. Look all I’m saying is that nonintervention worked pretty well for us for a couple hundred years, maybe we should take a look at it again.

In summary,  I am going to continue to claim the Republican party knowing that there will probably be no chance of anything beneficial to come from GOP anytime soon. They are leaning way too far “right” in too many instances and I am not sure what there is about the party that is worth saving, maybe I should just bite the bullet and be a full blown Libertarian. Obviously I plan on voting independent this election unless for some reason Obama convinces me he is the lesser of the two evils (which he could do) and that he isnt going to expand the government into any section left over that McCain won’t.

Terrance McKenna

Terrance Mckenna is to human beings what burning man is to festivals. I didn’t really prescreen these, they just happened to be two videos I watched today at work. If you are interested in unique thinkers you really should spend a few hours and see what Terrance McKenna has to offer…

A slow clock and a new book

I heard about the Millennium Clock recently after reading about the inspiration for Neal Stephenson’s new novel that is coming out next week called Anathem. Stephenson contributed scetches for the project, which is a basically a clock that is set to keep track of time as long as mechanically possible. While most clocks are built to keep track of time in as small of fractions as possible in as small a space as possible this one will take up most of a mountain and tick once a year for 10,000 years. The artist, Danny Hillis, has apparently been working on this since the 90s and came up with the idea in the 80’s while working on making supercomputers faster. From a Wired article, “It wasn’t clear that the world needed faster, faster, faster. So I began thinking about the opposite. Working on the fastest machine in the world got me thinking about the slowest.”  If you would like to, you could write if off as a dumb idea; I think it’s pretty amazing. Trying to imagine what will be around in the year 12,008 is pointless. I mean that’s … 10,000yrs / 75yr life span = 133 generations of people in the future. If you try to look back that many years, that puts people in groups of hunter gatherers just reaching North America, braving an ice age. There is no pressing reason to try and consider what will be around still, because nothing will. But, if you were really interested in what would be going on then, you could try to build a machine that will just be reaching its maturity. It’s the only sure way to know what will be around. Stephenson took inspiration from this and imagined a group of people that were fed up with our society and wanted to devote themselves to the future and more import ideas than our fixation on short term consumerism. From what I know about the story it’s about a dude who is set to be one of the first people to leave his sect of scientist and philosopher’s secluded land when it’s set to open to the world after his ancestors locked themselves away thousands of years earlier.

 

The whole clock thing reminded me of a project I found interesting earlier this year. Called the Telectroscope. 

This one had a giant telescope looking thing coming out of the ground in both London and New York. It was said to be a giant tube drilled through the Earth started in the 19th century. You could look at someone at the other side in real time, from London to New York through the tube. Of course it was done by using a broadband video feed that connected the two, but it represented the finished product of ideas that really where floating around in the 19th century of ways to transmit pictures over distances. I like it because I imagine showing one of the scientists from that era the device and them belittling them for not understanding modern electricity, which would be a good example of Arthur C Clarke’s 3rd rule of prediction: Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.

So anyway I just wikipedia’d it and turns out its called “installation art”… so yeah, I guess thats the kind of art im into.